The present invention relates in general to automated processing of personal data, and more particularly to protecting personal data read from a user terminal station by a server, in particular an Internet site server.
In order to satisfy increasingly insistent demands from consumers to protect their personal data, in particular their identity and address details, in relations between their terminal stations and servers, private policies generated by users are being provided in terminal stations.
After a call has been set up between a server and such a terminal station, the server communicates server policy data indicating in particular to the terminal station the various uses of the personal data of the user of the terminal station that the manager of the server wishes to take from the terminal station, in particular with a view to disseminating such personal data to other sites or economic players. In order to filter or screen such uses, the terminal station compares the received server policy data with the private policy data pre-stored in the terminal station so as to transmit personal data requested by the server only when the policies are compatible.
However, the policy of the server is merely a declaration and the server manager is not able subsequently, during an audit or when the user exercises their right of opposition, to justify that the user did indeed authorize the server manager to disseminate certain data.